Crash
by ardavenport
Summary: A sudden traffic accident at Rampart leads Roy and Johnny to a dramatic rescue


**CRASH**

by ardavenport

* * *

John Gage quickly washed his hands in the sink, grabbed a paper towel, left Rampart Emergency men's room and scored two points in the trash can with the crumpled-up wad on the way out.

It was a light day. The hallway was not too crowded with only a few people in the plastic chairs of the waiting area. Even their last run had been the most mild of incidents, a man with back pain. Looking either way, Johnny did not spot either Veronica or Ida, two attractive new student nurses at the hospital that he'd seen on his last shift. He had already taken a quick trip to the cafeteria, but had not spotted them there. Wondering if Roy would mind if he took another few minutes to check upstairs, he strolled down the hall to the base station.

"I'm telling you Kel, this looks pretty serious." Dr. Early held up a book to the small knot of people lingering around the base station. Gage read the title as he poured himself a cup of coffee. 'Pure, White and Deadly'. Doctor Brackett, Dixie McCall and his partner listened to Early's warnings. His brow furrowed as he took a sip of strong hospital brew. Did heroin cause tooth decay? As if it wasn't bad enough by itself.

"What's that you've got there, Doc? Is that about drugs?"

"One drug." Early held up his book, his blue eyes deadly serious.

"Apparently the one that's been causing the alarming rise in heart disease." Brackett folded his arms before him, his deep voice grave.

"Sugar." Roy sipped from his own coffee cup.

Gage's lip curled up. "Whaaaat?"

"Joe's been telling us about this doctor in England who's convinced that sugar has been causing heart disease." Dixie smiled enigmatically at Early and Gage could not tell if she believed it or not.

"I'm telling you, Kel. This guy Yudkin is on to something." Early gestured with his book.

Brackett shook his head. "I don't know, Joe. These studies from Ancel Keys look pretty convincing."

"I'm not saying dietary fat is innocent, but they should really be looking at sugar, too."

"Well, sugar has never been innocent." Dixie put a hand on her hip. "At least not as far as a girl keeping her waistline is concerned."

Roy jumped in. "It still rots your teeth. At least that's all I hear when I take the kids to the dentist." He took sip of his black coffee.

The doctors agreed amiably. They all took their coffee black, too.

"Oh, how's Mr. Reese?"

Brackett shrugged back at Gage. "I examined him. I didn't find anything obvious, but the kind of back pain he has . . . it could be a lot of things. I sent him up to X-ray."

"He sounded pretty knowledgeable about his back problem." Mr. Reese had named the numbers of the suspect vertebra in his lower back. And claimed it was a 'football injury', one of the most common sources of back pain the paramedics heard from their male victims. Roy wondered if he should re-think letting his son play the game when he was old enough; he was pretty sure that his wife, Joanne, was already against it, just based on the head injuries they saw in the games on TV. And one or two that DeSoto and Gage had responded to.

Johnny chimed in with his partner. "Yeah, it sounds like he's already seen a few doctors about it. But he didn't want any drugs for it even though it looked like he was in a lot of pain." Faking a back injury was one of the most common ways for addicts to try to scam drugs from emergency room doctors and paramedics. But this clearly was not the case for Mr. Reese.

They finished their coffee. The Doctors went to Brackett's office to further debate the perils of sugar. Roy and Johnny saw them pick up Dr. Morton on the way.

They stepped out under the usual cloudless, sunny California sky. It was late morning; too early for lunch, too long from breakfast. For Johnny, that had been a piece of buttered toast and he thought about maybe stopping somewhere for a hamburger. Roy started the squad and bemoaned his tendency to gain weight in a way disturbingly similar to how he remembered his father doing.

A car in the parking lot caught his eye. It was a dented blue Pinto, engine on, just barely moving. Roy immediately didn't like it. Outside of the fact that it was a terrible car, loud music blared from an open window.

" - - - To avoid complications, she never kept the same address. In conversation she spoke just like a baroness. - - - "

The driver was just a shadow hunched over the wheel. He – it did look like a he - had the look of someone prowling a parking lot, looking for someone to pull out of the parking space he had his eye on.

Johnny noticed the car, too.

"Hey, great song! Y'know maybe I should get a real sound system like that for my car. You think the chicks might like it?"

"- - - Met a man a-China. Went down to gatesh minor, then again, si-dently if its that way inclined. - - -"

"Not if they're playing that. I can't understand half the words."

"- - - curfew came naturally from Paris (naturally) 'cause she could care less, fastidious and precise - - -."

"Oh, Roy, you don't understand great music."

" - - - She's a killer Queeeeeeeeeeen - - - "

"Maybe not. But it's still a lousy car."

"Unnnh yeah." Johnny nodded. "You're right about that."

Roy pulled the squad out and as expected, the Pinto angled for their spot at the Emergency entrance. If they had an emergency, why would they wait for a closer parking space?

The pinto engine roared. Tires squealing as it accelerated - - -

\- - - crashing straight into Rampart's Emergency entrance, the small car going right through the double doors, shattering metal and glass into the hospital.

Roy hit the brakes.

"Whoa!" Johnny almost fell in his hurry to get out of the squad. Then he whirled and hit the pavement, caught in the sudden flash and boom of the explosion. Shaking his head, he lifted it to see the ball of fire rising up into the air.

"Johnny!"

"I'm OK! I'm OK!" He jumped to his feet to prove it. Roy had been on the far side of the squad from the explosion and now he was halfway across the bench seat trying to get to his partner. Not missing a beat when Johnny confirmed that he was uninjured, Roy grabbed the mic and reported the explosion and fire to dispatch. Johnny grabbed his helmet and opened the compartment with his turnouts. Scrambling out of the squad, Roy did the same.

Johnny stopped himself from going to the compartment with their equipment out of habit. They didn't need that. They had all the supplies they needed in the hospital. Plus doctors and nurses.

Rampart needed firefighters.

They got into their masks and oxygen tanks faster than if Captain Stanley had been standing there, drilling them with a stopwatch.

Roy ran to a side entrance that people were already emerging from, the sounds of the hospital fire alarm clanging from inside. Worried people in street clothes, nurses, orderlies and doctors in white streamed out past the firemen and helping ambulatory patients in pajamas or wrapped in blankets that covered the open backs of their hospital gowns. The paramedics both knew where the nearest fire equipment was, a hose in a wall case that Station Fifty-One had inspected a few months ago. It was in good working order and it charged right away. Roy took the lead with the nozzle with Johnny backing him up.

They burst through the door behind the admissions desk. The car must have turned left after it went in. Visible in a roaring wall of yellow-orange flame, its metal body was completely engulfed. If the driver has not made it out, there was no hope. Flame licked up to the ceiling, charring the walls. A plant was knocked over, magazines scattered on the floor, the people in the waiting area and staff having fled.

How could one little Pinto do all that?

Johnny caught a glimpse of movement and Roy shouted behind his face mask.

"Get back!"

Doctor Morton flinched from the fire that he was trying to get past and Doctors Early and Brackett grabbed him and the three dived back into Brackett's office, the door slamming shut behind them. Roy sprayed water behind them, wetting the whole area before attacking the fire around it. There was only a moment's indecision between the paramedics – get the victims out now or hold back the fire?

There was still too much flame around and they had something better than a garden hose to work with (but still nowhere near the power of what Engine Fifty-One had). They could hold the fire back from the office until the big guns got there.

They heard only the roar of the flames and their own heavy breathing in their masks. It was a hot, hot fire. Did that car have a whole tank of gas or something in it?

Roy concentrated on keeping the fire from spreading. But the fire on the other side of the car was still burning unchecked in the hall. They did not see anyone there at first, but then a door flew open and white nurses' uniforms emerged, pushing someone in a wheelchair away from the conflagration. Roy glimpsed a face turned their way in the growing smoke, Dixie McCall, before she turned away again and hustled her nurses and their patient away from the fire. They disappeared around the corner at the end of the corridor.

The hose in his hands started to soften and the stream of water slackened. They were starting to run low. And the linoleum floor was getting slippery under their boots and Gage skidded, almost falling and taking Roy down before catching himself. The water on the floor was working against them and they were running out of ammo. The black smoke thickened and Roy saw a runner of flame that he had been trying to hold back climb up the blackened wall again.

The hose suddenly gave up, going completely slack and emitting one last pathetic trickle. Sucking in oxygen from the tanks on their backs, the paramedics backed up toward the office door and getting ready to go in, grab the doctors and risk a run for it anyway.

A blast of water suddenly shot out from around the corner, hitting the car fire full on. At the same time the cavalry came running in from behind them. Firefighters in masks and turnouts from Station Ten rushed forward, their engine hose ready. Gage and DeSoto fell back, giving them room as they unleashed a powerful quenching blast on the fire. Then Roy closed on the lead man on the hose, touching his face mask to his.

"There's three people in the office over there! We need cover to get them out!"

The man looked to where Roy pointed and nodded that he had heard. He signaled to the man backing him up and the stream of water turned to suppress the flames licking the wall near the office door. Roy and Johnny dove forward.

"All right, out, out!"

"Come on, come on! Out! Out!"

They both shouted orders at the three doctors huddled and coughing in the office, away from the door and the heat. Gage grabbed Early by the arm and Morton came with him. Roy grabbed Brackett and exiting the office, they put themselves between the men and the fire. They all got soaked from the excess spray of water and Gage steadied Early on the slippery floor as he steadied Morton whose arm was wrapped in a white towel and clutched to his chest.

"Come on, come on!"

The doctors kept their heads down and coughed as the paramedics hustled them out through the door behind the desk of the waiting area. And then toward the outside door. The hospital was obviously being evacuated.

There were four engines outside and a ladder truck. Pushing off their face masks and breathing in L.A.'s smoggy yet still refreshing air, they hustled the doctors past running, shouting firemen and over hoses snaking on the ground, at first not knowing where they were going, except away from the danger. But Gage and DeSoto then spotted a gathering place on the far side of the parking lot.

Somebody had moved their squad and the compartment doors were open with nurses and doctors making free use of their equipment with the collection of patients there. Dixie McCall directed orderlies and nurses with wheelchairs and gurneys. A couple orderlies in white pants and short sleeve shirts arrived with a gurney loaded with more supplies from the hospital. Doctors and patients from the Emergency department and other parts of the hospital had claimed their own patch of parking lot nearby. A few patients had been wheeled out in their beds, IVs, oxygen and all.

McCall turned her head, spotted them and with a last few instructions to her nurses, ran to meet them. Nurses followed with oxygen. Large white tarps had been laid out in the parking lot and Gage and DeSoto took their charges there. Brackett tried to cough out directions for treating Dr. Morton's arm but didn't get far before Dixie planted an oxygen mask on his face.

"We'll take care of it, Kel. Just relax." Brackett looked offended for only a moment before accepting her edict. Even the head of Rampart's Emergency Department would not cross his head nurse.

"Aaaah! That fire is HOT!" Morton was coughing the least of the three as a doctor unwrapped his arm to look at it. But both Morton and Early accepted oxygen while the two paramendics devested themselves of their own tanks and masks.

The doctor, Ferris, from upstairs (both paramedics knew he had worked in the burn unit because he had treated injured firefighters) called out for cold compresses and sterile dressings. It was not a very big burn, at most 2nd degree over a small area and only on one arm, but both paramedics could see the blistering on Morton's dark skin. It would really smart, but Morton still declined any painkiller.

"I'm going to go check with Cap." Roy trotted off toward the fire trucks. It was obvious that the fire was now under control, the header of black smoke already thinning over the hospital. There were plenty of firefighter to finish it off and overhaul. And surrounded by nurses and doctors, there really wasn't much for a paramedic/firefighter to do.

Except put the squad back together.

Collecting their tanks and masks, Gage carried them back to their squad and then he looked for their equipment boxes. For some reason, someone had taken out the Biophone and left the heavy box on the pavement. The drug box and other first aid box were on two different gurneys, open and now ignored since other supplies had arrived from Rampart. Only sterile dressings and Kerlex had been taken and no one had used any of the drugs. And no one had touched their oxygen tank, probably because it was in another compartment on the other side of the squad and they hadn't found it. By the time he had everything put back together and put away, Roy was back.

The fire was nearly out and they would start overhauling it. Everyone inside was accounted for though they were doing a second headcount just to make sure. Roy radioed Dispatch that they were available, but the dispatcher just acknowledged the news without comment.

Even though there was nothing for them to do, Roy and Johnny stayed, standing close to the squad, watching the action and speculating about where the temporary emergency department would be and how long it would take to fix things. They had been up and running again only a few months after the last time the hospital lab blew up.

A commotion nearby caught their attention. A patient on a gurney was struggling with a hospital security guard and a doctor. The two paramedics moved to help, but orderlies in white got there first. They pushed him back at the shoulders, avoiding the white bandages covering his bare chest and arms as well as they could.

"That's the guy who was driving the car." Gage turned to see Nurse Kendry, who worked the admissions desk. Her face was bruised and her white uniform and nurse's cap crumpled and soot-stained and she glared toward the now-subdued patient, a doctor pulling out a hypodermic from his arm.

"He got out?" Gage could not contain his shock.

She nodded. Apparently, he flew out of the drive's side door as soon as the car hit the wall and exploded, his hair and clothes on fire. Three people had gotten burns dragging him out.

The man on the gurney went limp and another hospital security guard joined the people around him. But another figure caught Gage's eye. A man in a hospital gown with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Seated in a wheelchair, he watched the action around the now unconscious car driver.

"Hey, Mister Reese." Gage went to him and his partner followed. Reese jumped and then nervously greeted them. Looking again at the man on the gurney, Gage noticed that he was still wearing a pair of yellow and brown striped pants and his red hair, mustache and heavy sideburns were quite distinctive.

"Hey, isn't that the guy who offered to give you a ride to the hospital?" Roy squinted at the man on the gurney.

Reese had attracted an unhelpful crowd at the restaurant where he had collapsed from his back injury. The two paramedics repeatedly had to ask them to back off and the red-haired man had loudly proclaimed that he knew about back injuries and could save Reese the cost of an ambulance ride. But Reese had ignored him and insisted on being taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

DeSoto then remembered that Reese told him that he did not know the red-haired man on the ride to Rampart. And then in almost the next sentence, he laughed that he would never go to the hospital loaded into the back seat of a lousy Pinto.

How had he known that?

Reese's face froze when they asked him about it.

Then Roy was suddenly catching Johnny as Reese shoved them out of the way as the jumped up out of his wheelchair with shocking speed for anyone, but especially for a man who was supposed to be suffering from a painful back injury.

He tripped on his blanket and almost face-planted on the pavement before struggling away from it and taking off at a full run, his bare backside completely exposed by the hospital gown.

Shocked firefighters jumped away from the naked display, but two policemen, who were standing with the battalion chief heard the shouts and were able to catch up and tackle him. The hospital gown was completely lost in the tussle and everyone in the parking lot was staring at the naked man held fast by the cops until someone from the hospital came running with another blanket.

"You okay?" Roy shook Johnny, who was still sitting on the blacktop, transfixed by the action like everyone else. Gage shook his head and pushed back his damp and barely regulation hair.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine."

Roy helped him up. The cops hustled the man to a police car and people turned away, the show over.

Brushing himself off, Gage looked behind him, but the red-haired driver of the Pinto was obviously not in any shape to talk. "What the hell was that?"

"I don't know."

The excitement over, the paramedics went back to not getting in the way of the Rampart doctors and nurses. Brackett had recovered enough to go over to ask the Chief what was going on with his Emergency Department. Early had gone on to help with evacuated patients, leaving Morton nursing his bandaged arm. He profusely thanked them for getting them out of the office and they jokingly advising him not to take up firefighting as a hobby. He whole-heartedly agreed.

Then Gage and DeSoto filled him in on what they knew about Reese as they watched the red-haired Pinto driver being loaded into an ambulance to another hospital. A sheriff's deputy went along with him.

"Man, you have got to be kidding me."

Gage shook his head. "Nope."

"Damn. So, you think Reese was faking his back injury to get away from the guy with Pinto. And then the guy with the Pinto drove his car into Rampart? To get back at Reese?"

Roy shrugged. "Something like that. I guess."

"That's pretty extreme. And pretty stupid to do it with a Pinto."

Morton told them about some problems he had heard on the news with Pintos and exploding gas tanks. A recall was likely.

In the end, all they were sure of was that the Pinto was a lousy car.

* * *

ooo - ooo - ooo - ooo

* * *

It was 2 AM at Station Fifty-One. So, naturally the squad had a run.

It was a bar fight. But when Gage and DeSoto arrived in their turn-outs at the Y-Not bar and carrying their equipment, they found that the inebriated combatants had done more damage to the furniture (and one wall) than they had to each other. There were three Sheriff's deputies ready to take them away as soon as the paramedics bandaged the cuts on their faces and arms. They did not want to have to clean up any blood in the squad cars. No trip to the hospital was needed, which was just as well since Rampart was not back up to speed after the Pinto crash a few weeks ago.

Gage winced back from a beer-soaked exhale from his man. There weren't any germs that could survive that, he thought as he watched a deputy lead him away. His partner tossed away a bit of bloody gauze as he finished with his victim as well. They were just packing up their equipment when they saw a friendly face arrive.

"Hey Vince, how you doing?"

Officer Howard admitted that except this bar fight, it had actually been a slow night. They exchanged the usual grumblings about what the weekend would be like for them all and started to leave when Gage stopped, suddenly remembering something.

"Hey, Vince."

Howard turned around to look back at them.

"Did you hear anything more about that Reese guy and his friend who drove his Pinto into Rampart?

A sad smile spread over Howard's face under his mustache. "Not much and there's not any more coming, either."

DeSoto frowned. "Why not?"

"Because a couple hours after we took him in, when he wouldn't answer any questions - or even ask for a lawyer – a couple of G-Men came, scooped him up and we haven't heard a word since."

Gage's voice went up an octave. "What?!"

"Same thing happened to his friend with the Pinto. We didn't even get a name."

Roy's mouth gaped open. "You're kidding. How can that happen?"

"The Feds don't have to tell us anything. The detectives are mad about it, but that kind of thing is above my pay grade." He sounded entirely too satisfied to let the mystery go. "I'm just here to keep the streets clean and sweep up the drunks." Howard sounded like an old-time sheriff keeping his frontier town safe from the desperados. He even tipped his helmet toward them in an imitation cowboy hat salute.

They parted ways, the paramedics back to their squad, the deputies hauling away their drunks. The bartender sweeping up the broken glass and closing early.

Driving back to the station, they speculated about what Howard's news could mean. Johnny did not want to let it go and started picking through theories and Roy hoped that his partner would not keep him up talking about it. But Roy silently decided that if he tried, the other men in the fire station dormitory would throttle him if he didn't shut up. The light at the intersection ahead of them was green.

They both suddenly alerted at the sound of screeching tires.

A car on the street perpendicular to theirs had just fallen short of running the light up ahead of them and nearly broadsiding a white Ford coming their way. The driver of the Ford shouted out a curse loud enough for them to hear before moving on and passing them. Roy kept driving slowly; there wasn't much traffic out and no one behind them. So, the light at the intersection cycled through yellow to red and they stopped, allowing the other car to pass through the intersection.

It was a tan Pinto.

They watched the Pinto's red rear lights disappear into the distance before the light went green again and they moved on. Roy and Johnny agreed on one thing.

What a lousy car.

* * *

*** *** *** END *** *** ***

* * *

 **Disclaimer:** All characters belong to Mark VII Productions, Inc., Universal Studios and whoever else owns the 1970's TV show Emergency!; I am just playing in their sandbox.


End file.
